Living the multilingual university: the University of Prizren as a site of intercommunity contact in Kosovo

Abstract This paper explores the ongoing decisions and evaluations by stakeholders involved at a university in a stable multilingual context currently on the cusp of deciding for an additional, international language of education. The site in question is the University of Prizren, located in the young Republic of Kosovo. The region of Prizren is an established multilingual context, featuring Albanian, Bosnian and Turkish as official lingua-cultural groups, where the University of Prizren provides education in all three community languages, with some variation depending on subject and staff availability. Since the late 1990 s at the university and in wider society, lower levels of bi-or multilingualism in the community languages have led to decreased societal mixing across established cultural groups, a fact which becomes a factor in the university’s language policy decisions. Findings show different stakeholders’ perceptions regarding language choice in various domains within the university.